Enterprises that use Microsoft OUTLOOK® and LYNC® services can schedule online conferences with OUTLOOK. OUTLOOK comes with a built in button to schedule online LYNC meetings. Recently, Microsoft renamed LYNC as SKYPE For Business, and all references to LYNC here should be understood to refer to SKYPE For Business as well. (OUTLOOK, LYNC, and SKYPE are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp.)
When the meeting invitation is sent out, it includes a hyper link, a phone number, and a conference ID. Participants with LYNC clients who want to join the meeting just click the hyper link, their LYNC client launches, and the client joins the meeting. Participants who have only phone access at the time of the meeting can dial the phone number and can respond to audio prompts on the phone keypad by entering the conference Id that was sent in the OUTLOOK invitation.
While the Microsoft solution works in an all-Microsoft environment, in mixed environments there are difficulties. Participants that want to join the meeting from video equipment that does not support Microsoft LYNC cannot do it. When wanting to schedule an online video or audio meeting through OUTLOOK including third party audio video solutions, there is no built-in user interface (UI) in OUTLOOK to schedule the meeting, without employing a plug-in provided by the third party.
Currently vendors deploy a plugin to OUTLOOK to allow integration with the vendor's audio video solution. The plugin ensures a conference dial in number is sent with the meeting invitation, and resources are can be booked for the time of the conference.
This solution is inadequate. Among other things, it does not integrate with current Microsoft-scheduled LYNC clients. LYNC clients that want to join the meeting will need to dial this conference Id and cannot use the Microsoft solution flow that sends a hyper link to join the meeting. They are connected to the third party video equipment, and not to the Microsoft video servers. In addition, the plugin has to be deployed to all OUTLOOK users in the corporation, which can be a management challenge. A better approach to integrating LYNC conferences and non-LYNC conferences would be desirable.